Wednesday, June 12, 2013

An antidote for whining kids, By Tracey Vale


I use this analogy to counteract whining in my children--and it works!

“Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself: I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” - Groucho Marx


Copyright Tracey Vale 2013
Last school holidays, for example, the kids and I had driven to Hallet Cove and were enjoying the breath-taking cliff and coastal views from the boardwalk that spans from the cove almost to Marino Rocks. We had already done some beach combing and rock-skimming and were feeling quite warm despite the coolness of the Autumn day, when we began the ascent to the boardwalk. The views are fantastic and the walk around the cliffs, up and down steps at times, was tiring--but what's to dislike about a challenge when the visual rewards are there for the appreciating?

Copyright Tracey Vale, 2013
A lot, apparently, if my 10-year-old son was to be believed. There he was on this beautiful 'sunshiney' day, wearing the most miserable, bored, snarly face he could muster. Coupled with this, he kept whining--one of my pet hates. We had just reached a section of the walk that takes a V-shape inland and inbetween two hills. So, let me paint the picture--we're in a valley and we have just reached the far-side of the V so that we are now facing the point where the view between the green(ish) hills is of the deep blue ocean. Add to that, the stream directly below us which was flowing to a point where there were large boulders, thus forming waterfalls. 

Frustrated that his mood still hadn't improved despite the beauty around 
Copyright Tracey Vale, 2013
him, I say "Okay--it's like this. You can choose to be miserable and grumpy or you can look around you and appreciate what there is and where you are and choose to be happy about it.". I pointed to his other three siblings who were loving it and running ahead to where the waterfall was breaking over the rocks (one of whom was five and therefore much more likely not to cope with a walk, but, hey, look at him!), "No-one else is complaining. They're having a great time. I'll leave it with you--it's your choice. Think about how you want to feel today." I walked ahead.


Before long, he was loving it too.

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Bicycles, politics and society~ some related quotes



Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice
From Punch magazine, 1895. Dress vs. bicycle attire.
(Source: Wikimedia Commons)
every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel...the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood. -Susan B. Anthony, 1896.


When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. -Elizabeth West

Bicycling is a big part of the future. It has to be. There is something wrong with a society that drives a car to work out in a gym. -Bill Nye, scientist and producer of science television programs.


Government must help to eliminate cars so that bicycles can help to eliminate government.- Advocacy slogan in Holland.

Advertisement from 1897 showing bloomers.
(Source:Wikimedia Commons)
The bicycle will accomplish more for women’s sensible dress than all the reform movements that have ever been waged. -Author unknown, from Demerarest’s Family Magazine, 1895.

I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride, or fall into the sluice ways of oblivion and despair. That which made me succeed with the bicycle was precisely what had gained me a measure of success in life -- it was the hardihood of spirit that led me to begin, the persistence of will that held me to my task, and the patience that was willing to begin again when the last stroke had failed. And so I found high moral uses in the bicycle and can commend it as a teacher without pulpit or creed. She who succeeds in gaining the mastery of the bicycle will gain the mastery of life. -Frances E. Willard, How I Learned To Ride The Bicycle, 1895. 


It would not be at all strange if history came to the conclusion that the perfection of the bicycle was the greatest incident of the nineteenth century. -Anonymous
Early 20th Century bicycle. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

If, during the Second World War, the United States had retooled its factories for manufacturing bicycles instead of munitions, we’d be one of the healthiest, least oil-dependent, and most environmentally-sound constituents in the Nazi empire today. -Ralph Nader


Tuesday, June 4, 2013

For the love of a bicycle......


Bicycles, sporting a frame today that is not far removed from that of the late 1800s, have been an important part of society for well over a century for both its usefulness and its ability to boost the spirit, as the following bicycle quotes will attest:

The bicycle has a soul. If you succeed to love it, it will give you emotions that you will never forget. -
1886 Swift Safety Bicycle (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Mario Cipollini


It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. -Ernest Hemingway

Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride. -John F. Kennedy

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race. -H.G. Wells

As a kid I had a dream - I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bike in the backyard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors and the first night I even kept it in my bed. -John Lennon

When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking. -Sherlock Holmes author, Arthur Conan Doyle, Scientific American, 1896

Next to a leisurely walk I enjoy a spin on my tandem bicycle. It is splendid to feel the wind blowing in my face and the springy motion of my iron steed. The rapid rush through the air gives me a delicious sense of strength and buoyancy, and the exercise makes my pulse dance and my heart sing. -Helen Keller.

It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. -Ernest Hemingway

Whoever invented the bicycle deserves the thanks of humanity. -Lord Charles Beresford

Life is like a 10 speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. -Charles M. Schulz

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia. -H.G. Wells

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving. -Albert Einstein, letter to his son Eduard, 1930

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy. -Leo Tolstoy, in defence when criticised for learning to ride a bicycle, aged 67.

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off. -William G. Golding, Nobel Laureate and author of The lord of the flies.

After your first day of cycling, one dream is inevitable. A memory of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful dream bicycles that change and grow. -H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance

Let a man find himself, in distinction from others, on top of two wheels with a chain--at least in a poor country like Russia--and his vanity begins to swell out like his tires. -Leon Trotsky

I finally concluded that all failure was from a wobbling will rather than a wobbling wheel. -Frances E. Willard

The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community. -Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895.

The bicycle, the bicycle, surely should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets. -Christopher Morely Nobel prize winner

If I can bicycle, I bicycle. -David Attenborough